Best YouTube Alternative Apps for iPad

As we all know, iPads make excellent media consumption devices, especially for video content. When viewing video content on your iPad, where do you turn? YouTube has become the Google of video search engines, the go to, the staple, the most well-known of them all. But, in some cases, it still doesn’t meet the needs of its users. In those cases, you might find yourself looking for YouTube alternative apps for your iPad. We’ve compiled a list of our favorites below.

[Price: Free]
Dailymotion, YouTube’s number one competitor, offers a pretty solid YouTube alternative app for iPad. The app has a pretty great “Discover” tab that puts categories at the front of the search. Users who aren’t exactly sure what they’re looking for can start with general categories such as Cars, Gaming or Tech. For whatever reason, though, the gridview doesn’t show who the video’s publisher is. Maybe that’s a strategic move? The benefit of using Dailymotion is the number of videos that you wouldn’t find within YouTube. Discover new channels that post content most relevant to you.

Best YouTube Alternative Apps for iPad

macOS Sierra beta 6 released to developers and public

[Price: $4.99]
A big focus for YouTube, especially recently, is music. YouTube has been promoting their music app (not currently available on iPad) pretty heavily lately, but there are other options out there that go after the same goal. Music Tube focuses on music and music videos (found in YouTube) and allows you to create custom playlists with your favorite artists. The interface allows you to keep listening/watching while perusing through the app and looking for what to watch next. However, the biggest reason to check out Music Tube is the ability listen to your favorite songs with the screen off, even in the free version of the app. With YouTube, you’ll have to use the paid YouTube Red to make this happen.

[Price: Free]
Tubex is similar to Music Tube in that you can continue listening to your videos with the screen off. This is especially useful for people who like to use YouTube to listen to podcasts or music. Tubex ties in with your YouTube account so you have access to all of your subscriptions, but one thing that annoys me is you can’t organize your subscriptions alphabetically in the side menu – they follow YouTube’s “Most Relevant” sorting instead with no option to change. Another feature that will stand out to podcast fans is the ability to increase or decrease video playback speed, a feature not found in the native YouTube app.

[Price: $2.99]
If you’re looking to get the most out of your video search, Video Tube might be the way to go. Video Tube allows you to search within three of the largest video search engines – YouTube, Dailymotion and Vimeo. Find videos by searching in all three, or single out only one of the three. The UI is clean, fast and responsive, and again with this app, by signing in with your YouTube account, you have access to all of your subscriptions. Something else unique to this app is the iPad widget that shows you the most recent videos added to Video Tube in a certain category. I do wish that you could customize the widget to only show videos from a certain set of publishers.

[Price: Free]
Vimeo is another one of YouTube’s major competitors, but this app has an increased focus on quality content. Vimeo is popular within the film industry, evident by the many short films that can be found, with details on what gear was used to make the movies. A huge feature that lands Vimeo on our list of YouTube alternative apps is the ability to save videos for offline playback. This is great if you find a video you’re interested in but don’t have time to watch, or if you’re traveling and won’t have access to reliable internet. Oh, and did I mention Vimeo is free for viewers and doesn’t have ads?

Although YouTube meets most users’ needs, there are some great options available as alternatives. Didn’t see an app in this list that you’ve used in place of YouTube? Let us know in the comments below!